You have probably come across different ideas about the general safety of vaping and what makes it safer than products of traditional cigarettes and tobacco. Perhaps you have heard statements about vaping being totally safe and without any potential harm. On the other side, statements that paint vaping to be less safe. You are not alone. Many people out there are also curious about these conflicting opinions. After a thorough exploration of what hard science holds about vaping, we understood a great deal of reality about the effects of vaping on consumers’ health.
In this article, we will be examining if vaping is bad or safe, vaping Vs cigarettes smoking, smoking cigars, and the properties that make nicotine addictive.
Vaping Vs. Cigarettes
Studies conducted in the United Kingdom by the Royal College of Physicians reveal that e-cigarettes cause below 5% of the type of harm caused by smoking tobacco. That implies that e-cigarettes and vaporizers in terms of harm are nowhere near the effects of cigarettes smoking. In spite of this science-based fact, some media outlets work relentlessly in projecting the false, unsupported ideas that the effects of using vape mods are more or less like those of smoking cigarettes. Though vaping involves some nicotine, the amount is quite small, and it also contains a small number of harmful chemicals as well as the tar that causes cancer. While vaping comes with minor amounts of these substances, they are predominant in cigarette smoke.
Another research carried out at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute found that vaping toxicants from e-cigarettes compared to cigarette smoke are 9-450 times much lower. This findings are quite revealing and show that people in the vaping community take in a very small amount of those chemicals with their premium liquid vape modes or e-cigarettes compared to the overwhelmingly problematic chemicals smokers of cigarettes absorb.
Further, Konstantinos Farsalinos who is actually a cardiologist and an expert in e-cigarettes from the University of Patras in Greece made a discovery which states that when juxtaposed with cigarette smoking, vaping has a particularly little impact on the cardiovascular system generally. According to suggestions from the study, the use of e-cigarette compared to smoking cigarettes can lead to improvement of the user’s health in the long-run.
The major differences between vaporizers and cigarettes are the substances they each contain.
Vaporizers
- Contain no tar
• Produces no carbon monoxide
• Four ingredients
• No second-hand smoke
• No stink
Cigarettes
- Tar
• carbon monoxide
• Thousands of chemicals
• Second smoke
• stink
How Harmful is Vaping E-Cigars?
The smoke released by conventional cigars comprises a relatively high amount of toxins and tar compared to smoke from standard cigarettes. Also, cigar users differ in the way they smoke compared to those who consume cigarettes and vaporizers. Smokers of cigarettes typically spend a couple of minutes to smoke and also do inhale the smoke.
With cigars, most consumers don’t inhale the smoke. Rather they only savor the smoke flavor in the mouth. However, this doesn’t still stop cigar smokers from absorbing the nicotine in the product. Cigars take longer to burn, and smoking them can last for an hour.
Common Misconceptions About Vaping
Several studies clarify the high negative impact of smoking tobacco has over vaping or e-cigarettes. The thing is, the mainstream media is just not ready to give these many scientific studies and their outcomes the spotlight they merit. The study which got significant media attention was conducted by Portland State University, and it was on a discovery that e-cigarettes are capable of producing formaldehyde if used in high temperatures areas.
With the press covering the news about the discovery, the information spread quickly online. An NBC.com headline also reported about the discovery, highlighting that vaping produces(vape tanks,vape pens ,vape mods …. ) high Levels of Formaldehyde found in E-Cigs. Next, was an article published by Tech Times that also ran the same story. What is the biggest problem regarding the study, and those articles were that the vaporizers produced formaldehyde at an extremely high volume that was beyond any average human to inhale the vapor.
Even Konstantinos Farsalinos of Portland State University publishes these types of stories without giving attention to the fact that the voltage at which formaldehyde was produced was almost impossible any human to inhale. These headlines perhaps pushed a lot of people to keep smoking cigarettes due to the fear that e-cigarettes contain formaldehyde.
The media published many stories and never cared to mention that people who conducted the study never stated that when used at lower or average temperatures, vaporizers cannot produce formaldehyde. The authors of the study themselves got frustrated with the way their data had been hijacked by the mainstream media to hype the unfounded idea that e-cigarettes are rather more dangerous than tobacco. David Peyton, one of the authors of the PSU study told New York Times that it was extremely frustrating for them who did the study to hear the media pushing a false narrative that e-cigarettes have more damaging effects on users than cigarettes.
How Addictive is Nicotine?
The vapor e-cigarettes produce contain a small amount of toxins as well as harmful substances compared to cigarettes or cigars. Nicotine has attracted so much press attention since it was discovered that it contributes to causing cancer but does not cause cancer by itself. The media still runs stories that make nicotine a cause of cancer, and that is without evidence. However, nicotine is addictive. The Royal Society for Public Health piloted a survey which showed that 90% of UK residents still harbor the wrong belief that nicotine is a cancer-causing substance.
Though tobacco like other substances is among the most addictive just behind cocaine and heroin, nicotine, however, may not come with the same amount of addiction as previously thought. It is the main addictive substance found in tobacco, but more recent research has revealed that when smoked in tobacco, the effects are less strong. A Neuropharmacology story revealed that the use of tobacco comes with one of the leading rates of addiction. Paradoxically, when it comes to animal models, the substance is rather a feeble reinforcer. This may imply that it could be the combination of nicotine and other substances that make tobacco so addictive and not only nicotine alone.
In 2015 Harvard University conducted a study analyzing pyrazines which are additives found in “light” cigarettes. The results of the study illustrated how the additives helped nicotine delivery. So nicotine is perhaps not alone in raising tobacco addiction levels. With studies such as linking other addictive properties to tobacco, there is also speculation about the level at which nicotine alone is addictive. Quantity also plays a big role in how much impact nicotine has on a consumer, which goes back to vaping that has to do with a significantly small amount of the substance as compared to the high levels found in cigars and cigarettes.